The calm and destruction in Pepe Diokno’s ‘Above the Clouds’

There was a time in my childhood when my family would go to Baguio for a vacation. I distinctly remember my father giving me a Kodak camera while we were at Camp John Hay, a moment that cemented my love for photography. I remember eating strawberries and realizing that I do not like them. I remember going to Teacher’s Village and Burnham Park.

Today, those are just fragments of family trips that happened more than a decade ago. Only the vacation photos stored in a chest in our living room are left. Whenever I look at one photo in particular, a shot of our family visiting the PMA, I notice the changes we’ve been through since that photo was taken. And we’ve changed a lot. But more importantly, I miss the times when I was just a kid and going around Baguio with my family. It seems innocent, but I miss those times.

This is what Pepe Diokno’s latest offering, "Above the Clouds," thrives on. Far from his first feature, the dark and gritty "Engkwentro", Diokno's second film, as the title suggests, is ethereal, slow-moving, and poignant—a meditation on loss and the eventual passage of time.

The film follows the story of 15-year-old Andy (Ruru Madrid), whose parents were killed when Tropical Storm Ondoy wreaked havok on Metro Manila in 2009. (He partly feels guilty for having survived the catastrophe.) Now without a family in Manila, he is forced to live with his estranged grandfather (Jose "Pepe" Smith) in a rickety home in Baguio. Neither wants to be in this situation, but they are forced to be anyway. And thus the slow process of bonding begins.

When Andy discovers an old photo of his parents on top of a mountain, his grandfather, who is also a mountaineer, decides that they should go on a trek up the same mountain as a way of instilling life lessons into the kid. Andy is against it; he just wants to go home. The thing is, he no longer has his old home to go back to, so he has to adapt to this new one—while coping with the loss of his parents. It is this reality that sets the stage for Andy's conflicts with his grandfather.

Both Madrid and Smith are commendable in the film. They, along with the crew, had to trek for hours to shooting locations. Diokno even mentioned that they had to bring a stretcher and an oxygen mask for the 67-year-old Smith. At times, though, I could still feel the hesitation from both actors to let themselves be absorbed by their respective roles. Eventually, they were outshined by the mountain itself.

That’s not a bad thing, though. Diokno said that when he wrote the script, he wanted the mountain to be another character in the film. Furthermore, this film is from Andy’s point of view. So when he is angry at his grandfather, the river they are crossing swells. When Andy is lost, the surrounding area turns pitch black. This fluidity in character-building and location setting is well-choreographed by cinematographer Carlo Mendoza and production designers Benjamin Padero and Carlo Tabije.

The mountain speaks in its silence, with every nook and cranny awash with light or shrouded, with no light at all. Some viewers even reacted to how the mountain was treated, with one scene showing the grandfather opening a sacred coffin, and another showing tons of garbage near a waterfall. In a Facebook post, Diokno explained that the coffin was a prop, and that the litter was put there, and then removed, by the crew.


The reactions show just how effective the production crew conceived and created this mini-world for Andy and his grandfather to explore—settings that highlight Andy’s grief and isolation. The mountain is not Mt. Pulag. Rather, it is a fictional mountain, with scenes shot on Mt. Pulag, Mt. Sto. Tomas, Mt. Makiling and Wawa Dam. The moon in one crucial scene was CGI.

Part of me wants to compare this tale of traveling for self-discovery to Antoinette Jadaone’s "That Thing Called Tadhana." Both films are relatable to a 21st-century middle class both empowered and isolated by social media. The views are picturesque, fitting for a mountaineer's Instagram account. It would not have worked in any other decade or with any other filmmaker.

Diokno said that he lost a part of himself when his grandmother died in 2011, and that photos of her were all that he had left of her. His confrontation with death mirrors the plight of Andy as he reaches the top of the summit. The rocks are riddled with graffiti made by previous mountaineers, including his parents. The serene mountain in the old photos is no more. Instead, he sees a landscape claimed and abused by humanity. Yet above all that seeming destruction is a sea of clouds on the horizon. It is, as witnessed by Andy, quiet in its movement and still in its silence.

With that, I leave you with this quote from a book about an old man on the sea:

"A man can be destroyed, but not defeated." — BM, GMA News

"Above the Clouds" has made rounds in various film festivals abroad. It will be shown in special screenings throughout the country.